Jaqueline Wilde is launching Pop Up Yoga with help from the Darden School's incubator program that provides seed money to assist students in meeting their entrepreneurial goals.

Courteney Stuart

Wilde leads the class through various poses on the asphault adjacent to City Market.

Courteney Stuart

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The options for doing yoga in Charlottesville already run the
gamut from relaxing Hatha to vigorous Ashtanga to oh-so-sweaty
Bikram, performed in a heated room. Jacqueline Wilde saw an
opportunity to stretch the offerings even further with a new
business that'll have participants downward dogging in outdoor
public spaces around town.

"I'm targeting yoga toward beginners," says Wilde, a 27-year-old
second-year Darden student who launched the appropriately named Pop
Up Yoga this month with several free classes held in public spaces
and parks around town.

So far, she says, the reception has been warm.

"I prefer being outside, says Anthony Zammitt, a 32-year-old
longtime martial arts practitioner who was trying yoga for the
first time with Wilde on Saturday morning, July 9 at the
Charlottesville City Market. The style of the Pop Up classes–
"Vinyasa flow"– is a gentle form that has participants move
steadily through various poses stressing flexibility and
breathing.

Another free Pop Up class will take place at Washington Park on
Friday, July 15 at 8am, and several other classes listed on the
website, www.popupyogacville.com, will
be held in the next coming weeks for the usual $10 fee.

In addition to the scheduled classes– Wilde hopes to have
several instructors teaching as many as 15 per week– Wilde is also
encouraging class members to use her "Yoga on Demand" feature,
which...

The DEQ's Kathleen Willis explains what the state wants from high bidder Sam Desai.

photo by Hawes Spencer

After a spirited bidding war that included
half-million-dollar-plus bids from one of Charlottesville's
best-known developers and from the company that may have created
the concept of the upscale filling station, a heretofore
low-profile business owner made the winning bid for the long-closed
Fuel Co. station in a July 14 foreclosure auction.

Located on Market Street at the northern terminus of the Belmont
Bridge, the .31-acre site was once heralded as the vanguard in a
new wave of upscale gas stations. But after the Thursday morning
auction, it appears on its way to trade hands for about half its
assessed value.

With a winning bid of $580,000, Subhash "Sam" Desai outbid
developer Keith Woodard and David Sutton, leader of Tiger Fuel, the
petroleum company that, with its Bellair Market, appears to have
pioneered
the notion of selling fancy foods at gas stations.

"There are a lot of problems with the property," said Sutton,
explaining why he halted his bids at $575,000. "This has been a gas
station for 30 or 40 years, so there's no telling what's in the
ground."

A state Department of Environmental Quality employee attended
the auction, and auction leader Nancy Schlichting took the unusual
step of giving the winning bidder a chance for a study period,
which will allow him to back out if environmental problems are
found. Schlichting is allowing...

It's easy to say you know how the Green movement works– you've
read the blogs, follow the Twitter updates, and talk with your
well-to-do friends about the latest trend in Green living
regularly. But living an eco-conscious lifestyle isn't exclusively
for the well-off. Indeed, often the most environmentally savvy and
economically practical among us are the everyday blue-collar
workers– those who protect our green spaces and practice smart
living without making a big fuss or, often, without realizing it at
all. The Hook goes under the Green movement radar and talks with
those locals who can really say they live an environmentally
friendly life– and they remind us of the little things we can be do
to stay on the eco-conscious front line.

Darrell Camper Darrell
Camper– Landscape Supply, Inc.

One time, it was fall and everybody was
cleaning up leaves. One of our few responsibilities on the golf
course that I worked at was to pick up the neighborhood leaves. We
collected dumptruck after dumptruck of them in tremendous piles. We
had a dump site on the property where we would collect topsoil, and
there were holes dug for it. Occasionally, they got a little deep.
That was where we...

Putting a road atop a National Park was a novel concept-- and one that probably won't be repeated.

National Park Service

Retired UVA researcher Nancy Martin-Perdue began hearing stories about the displaced when living in Rappahannock in the 1970s.

photo by Lisa Provence

"Wife and child of squatter, Old Rag, Virginia," reads the original caption. No matter how long they'd dwelled or what they'd built, anyone without land title was considered a squatter.

National Park Service

Mrs. George Bailey Nicholson at her home in the Madison County enclave of Corbin Hollow. She was widowed in 1931 when a chestnut tree fell on her husband, a preacher. The government paid $910 for her house and 25 acres.

National Park Service

Shenandoah National Park partial map.

Drying apples, "one of the few sources of income for mountain folk," and a cider and apple stand on Lee Highway near the northern tip of the park.

PHOTOS NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

"Half-wit Corbin Hollow boy" and Virgie Corbin, who "has the mentality of a child of seven," according to original federal photo captions.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

The most famous "squatter removal" was the eviction of pregnant Lessie Jenkins.

Jimmy Brown (shown with daughter Caleigh-Ruth) is the great-grandson of the postmaster of the now-vanished town of Old Rag, William Austin Brown, above right, who was grandfather to the three girls above.

PHOTOS NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, LISA PROVENCE

Ruins of a former home in Corbin Hollow.

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

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A lot can change in three quarters of a century. Walk along the
Hughes River in Madison County in a place called Nicholson Hollow,
and there's little trace that this was once a thriving village.

Now heavily wooded, the hollow was a lot more open then because
trees had been cut since the late 1700s to build houses, barns, and
fences, and the land left open for gardens, orchards, and pastures
for cattle and horses. Seventy-five years ago, the hollow became
part of the East Coast's first national park when it opened after
heaps of controversy.

Jim Lillard's grandfather, W.A. Woodward, owned a 154-acre farm
in Nicholson Hollow. Lillard pulls out a plat that shows not only
the location of the frame farmhouse but also identifies the owners
of neighboring farms, as well as the sites of the school, church,
mill, and road.

"If you look at that, you could see a community thrived," says
Lillard. "It really was a civilization, not a bunch of
hillbillies."

But 75 years ago, the residents of Nicholson Hollow were indeed
portrayed as hillbillies, even successful, educated farmers like
Woodward. Photo captions in the Library of Congress mention a man
with a "rude sled" and describe one child as a "half wit."

In the winter, stone chimneys and foundations can be spotted
here, but in late June, unless you're sharp-eyed, there's no
evidence that people lived here for generations. And that's what
the creators of the Shenandoah National Park intended.

Two weeks ago, a story in the Crozet
Gazette enthusiastically suggested that the
Batesville Store, a popular music venue and
country store that was forced to close when the Health
Department cited the owners for more or less running
a restaurant without a permit, might re-open. However, when we
spoke to store owner Cid Scallet on July
13, he was cautious about such pronouncements.

"Apparently there's a rumor floating around that has taken on a
life of its own," he says. "Yes, there's a possibility we might
re-open, but the key word is 'maybe.'"

Since 2007, Scallet and his wife had been running the store under
guidelines from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and
Consumer Safety [VDACS], which monitors all grocery and
convenience stores. But according to local health department
officials, when a case of foodborne illness was reported,
agents investigated and discovered that the store was operating as
a restaurant with as many as 40 seats, something Scallet does not
refute. On June 10, health department agents
ordered them to stop their restaurant operation. By June
12, t...